ools so that they confuse the thinking of youth and
break the equilibrium between education and vocations, and people and
industries.... In the graded elementary schools of the State of New
York, less than half of the children remain to the end of the course.
They do not start early enough. They do not attend regularly enough. The
course is too full of mere pedagogical method, exploitation and
illustration, if not of kinds and classes of work. The terms are too
short and the vacations too long.... More than half of the children drop
out by the time they are fourteen or fifteen, the limits of the
compulsory attendance age, because the work of the schools is behind the
age of the pupils, and we do not teach them the things which lead them
and their parents to think it will be worth their while to remain."

Observe that Judge Draper writes of the graded schools only. Could you
conceive of a more stinging rebuke to an institution from a man who is
making it his business to know its innermost workings?

These statements refer, not to the small percentage of children who go
to high school, but to that great mass of children who leave the school
at, or before, fourteen years of age. If you do not believe them, go
among working children and find out what their intellectual
qualifications really are.

One fact must be clearly borne in mind,--the school system is a social
institution. In the schools are the people's children. Public taxes
provide the funds for public education. Perhaps no great institution is
more generally a part of community interest and experience than the
public school system.

The most surprising thing about the school figures is the overwhelming
proportion of students in the elementary grades--17,050,441 of the
18,207,803. If you draw three lines, the first representing the number
of children in the elementary schools, the second showing the number in
the high school, and the third the number of students in colleges,
professional and normal schools, the contrast is astonishing.

It is perfectly evident, therefore, that the real work of education
must be done in the elementary grades. The high schools with a million
students, and the universities, colleges, professional and normal
schools with three hundred thousand more, constitute an increasingly
important factor in education; at the same time, for every seven
students in these higher schools, there are ninety-three children in the
elementary grades.